JC Alfier most recently published a book of poetry, The Shadow Field (Louisiana Literature Press) in 2020. Journal credits include Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. He is also an artist doing collage and double- exposure work.

Karan Kapoor is the Editor-in-Chief of ONLY POEMS and an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. A finalist for the Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in JOYLAND, and their translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They worship at the altar of Leonard Cohen and are currently treating the class they teach as a church to spread love for the maestro. Find them at: karankapoor.net Instagram: @whyareyounotreading X(Twitter): @poetkarankapoor

Scott Brennan, a photographer and writer, divides his time between Miami, Florida, and Vermont. His recent work has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, The Hopkins Review, and River Styx. His first book of poetry, Raft Made of Seagull Feathers (Main Street Rag Press), was reissued this year. Find him at scottbrennan6.weebly.com or on Instagram @scottbrennan 6

Arlon Jay Staggs worked as an award-winning copywriter and brand strategist for two decades before earning his MFA in fiction from the University of California, Riverside. He also holds a law degree from the Mississippi College School of Law. He is currently seeking representation for his debut novel. He and his husband split time between Seagrove Beach, Florida and San Diego, California. Find him at www.arlonjay.com

A.J. Bermudez is an award-winning author and filmmaker based in New York and Los Angeles. Her first book, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, won the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist. Her feature film My Dead Friend Zoe premiered at SXSW in March 2024. She is a recipient of the Page Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship. She is a former boxer, EMT, and underage bartender. Learn more at http://amandajbermudez.com or find her on Instagram: @a.j.bermudez or X(Twitter): @amandajbermudez

GJ Gillespie is a collage artist living in a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island (north of Seattle). In addition to natural beauty, he is inspired by art history — especially mid century abstract expressionism. The “Northwest Mystics” who produced haunting images from this region 60 years ago are favorites. Winner of 20 awards, his art has appeared in 61 shows and 120 publications. When he is not making art, he runs his sketchbook company Leda Art Supply. Learn more at https://www.gjgillespieartistic.com/ or find him on Instagram: @garygillespie7

Each year, december is honored to host a Guest Judge for our poetry and prose contests. Our judges are writers whose work is beloved and whose contributions to the literary community are uniquely significant. Roxanne Gay, Joyce Carol Oates, Taté Walker, Brittney Cooper, Anne Tyler, Eula Biss, Albert Goldbarth, Rita Mae Brown, and many others have lent their expertise to our past contests. It’s a joy and privilege to work with such brilliant people, and we want to share the experience!

Our inaugural Off the Page event has been rescheduled for July 17th. The first in a series of free online conversations with our Guest Judges. Learn and enjoy with some of your favorite writers and the december team. We will share a new date as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

For our first Off the Page event, we will be joined by Dorianne Laux, Guest Judge of december’s 2024 Marvin Bell Poetry Prize Contest. Ms. Laux is the author of Life On Earth, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems, The Book of Men, and four other collections of poetry. She is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, winner of The Paterson Prize, and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. 

Dorianne will be in conversation by Grace Cavalieri, poet and host of the popular podcast The Poet and the Poem. Following their conversation, we will be joined by the finalists and winners of the 2024 Marvin Bell Poetry Prize Contest, who will read their winning poems. Learn more about the winning poets below! 

SUSANNA LANG (in absentia) – WINNER – “In Your Father’s Garden” 

Susanna Lang divides her time between Chicago and Uzès, France, where she loves to sit in the Place Aux Herbes with a glass of rosé. Her chapbook, Like This, was released in 2023 (Unsolicited Books), along with her translations of poems by Souad Labbize, My Soul Has No Corners (Diálogos Books). In addition to earlier appearances in december, her work appears in such publications as The Common, Asymptote, American Life in Poetry, and others. Learn more at www.susannalang.com

TIMOTHY KELLY – HONORABLE MENTION – “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” 

Timothy Kelly was raised in Cleveland and educated in Ohio, Boston and Seattle. He has published three poetry collections and a chapbook  In the last 12 months, his poems have appeared are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, the Madrona Project, The Healing Muse, and december. He has lived in Olympia, WA for 40 years, is married, raised two boys, and recently retired from a career in Physical Therapy. Learn more on Instagram at @olytk51

NICOLE ADABUNU – FINALIST – “bones arched like flowers”

Nicole Adabunu is an MFA Poetry graduate from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a 2024 Cave Canem Fellow, and her work has been published by Writer’s Digest, The Academy of American Poets, The Drift, and elsewhere. She currently lives and writes in Chicago. Learn more at www.nicoleadabunu.com, on Instagram at @alive_atleast, and on Twitter at @NotNowNicole.

B.J. BUCKLEY – FINALIST – “Watching the Horses in First Snow” 

Montana poet B.J. Buckley has taught in Arts-in-Schools/Communities programs throughout the West and Midwest for five decades. Her recent work appears in Mudfish, Pine Row, december, Poeming Pigeon, and Willow Springs. Two new books, Flyover Country (Pine Row) and Night Music (Finishing Line Press) are forthcoming in 2024. Learn more at wild4verses.wixsite.com/b-j-buckley

AIDEN HEUNG – FINALIST – “Mannequin” 

Aiden Heung (He/They) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Australian Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, Poetry International, Harvard Review, Cincinnati Review, and other publications. After working as a traveling salesman for years, he relocated to St. Louis where he is an MFA candidate at Washington University. Learn more on Twitter at @aidenheung

ELIZABETH HICKSON – FINALIST – “Ode to the Smallest Supernova”

Elizabeth Hickson is a graduate of Brooklyn College, where she earned her MFA in Poetry. She is also a graduate of Wake Forest University, where she earned a B.A. in English Literature and received the D.A. Brown Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. Originally from Ohio, she currently lives in North Carolina.Learn more on Instagram at @elizabeth_hickson

ALISON LUBAR – FINALIST – “bullet ● points” 

Alison Lubar teaches high school English by day and yoga by night. They’re the author of four chapbooks, and their first full-length poetry collection, METAMOURPHOSIS, is forthcoming with fifth wheel press in October 2024. Learn more at http://www.alisonlubar.com/ or on Twitter at @theoriginalison

WILLIAM OREM – FINALIST – “Jellyfish Season, Chesapeake” 

William Orem writes about spiritual issues. His first collection of poems, Our Purpose in Speaking, won the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and the Rubery International Book Award. He is a Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College, and his novels, short story collections, and plays can be found at williamorem.com

LEXI PELLE – FINALIST – “Ode to the Box of Red Lentil Pasta” 

Lexi Pelle was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Ninth Letter, SWWIM and Crosswinds Poetry Journal. She is the author of the poetry collection Let Go With The Lights On. Learn more at lexipelle.org and on Instagram and Twitter at @lexipellepoetry

Our Spring/Summer issue Vol. 35.1 is here! Don’t miss it. Subscribe or order your copy today!

Allen M. Price was a finalist for the 2024 Kenyon Review Developmental Editing Fellowship and Witness magazine’s 2024 and Black Warrior Review’s 2023 Nonfiction Contest. He won Solstice Literary Magazine’s 2023 Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Prize (chosen by Grace Talusan). He also won Blue Earth Review‘s 2022 Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest and Columbia Journal’s 2021 Nonfiction Winter Contest (chosen by Pamela Sneed). A three time Pushcart Prize and two time Best American Essays nominee, his work appears or is forthcoming in Roxanne Gay’s The Audacity, The Missouri Review, Blue Mesa Review, African Voices, North American Review, The Masters Review, and many others. He has an MA from Emerson College. You can find his essay, “One Blood,” in Vol. 34.2 of december.

december Q&A

december: Tell us a bit about your work in essaydecember: where did it come from? What does it mean to you? 

Allen: I had just finished reading His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, a 2022 biography written by Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. It struck me how similar my and George Floyd’s lives were; from our age, to our upbringing, to our struggle with drugs and racism, and it bothered me that I was alive and he was dead. It really had a profound impact on me. I felt the need to write this and show there was no difference between us. I just happened to be blessed to still be on earth.

december: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on it? A stroke of inspiration, a generative brainstorm, a revision challenge, an a-ha moment, a time you shared it with a reader who loved it? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.  

Allen: I remember crying when I read George Floyd used drugs to mask the pain of racism, that he built his thin body into a muscular one to fit into white American society, and after he did, they looked at him like a scary creature when inside he was just a soft, quiet momma’s boy like me. That was the moment I knew I had to write this essay.

december: Can you tell us how literary magazines like december have been important in your literary career? What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?  

Allen: The most important part of publishing for me is getting the purpose of my work out to people. Without literary magazines, I know that would not have happened. Literary magazines are indispensable to reach new readers. The work literary journals publish is vital to our country, to our world, to continue to bring justice and happiness. We’re living in very difficult times, most the world has ever seen, and the work I’ve read in different journals brings words to life to give meaning to our lives. Sort of the same way the Dead Sea Scrolls did for many thousands of years ago. Literary magazines give people reason to think and believe in a better future.

december: What are you working on now?  

Allen: I don’t write fiction but something internally has pushed me to write a dystopian historical novel about Rhode Island’s most famous slave, Newport Gardner. His African name was Occramer Marycoo. He was America’s first Black published music composer. He bought his freedom, and when he felt he couldn’t make it in America he returned to his home country of Liberia at eighty years old — only to die a short while after from a disease he contracted on the sail over. I’ve written about him in my published essays. It came to me after reading and watching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I had avoided the book because it scared me, but given where our country is today, I felt compelled.

december: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?  

Allen: I love nature and go for three hour walks in the woods three times a week. It’s often where my inspiration comes from. 

december: Where can people find out more about you?

Instagram: @allenmprice 

“Lake Okeechobee” by Samantha Edmonds

hunter hodkinson

DIGGING A HOLE

I never dug a hole 
to China. 

As a child the whole idea 
seemed impossible.

How could a boy
of eight or nine 
use his grandma’s
gardening shovel 
to dig a hole 
big enough for
us both?

I love it here
she’d say,
this is my home. 

Well,
if she wasn’t going
I sure as hell wasn’t. 

I couldn’t even say 
Hello!
in Chinese,
let alone 
Chicken nugget 
Happy Meal please!

My exposure 
to Asian culture 
was limited to 
The Karate Kid 
remake with Jaden Smith,
and the one time Dad
forced me to watch 
Big Trouble In Little China
with him. 

Escape was out 
of the question.

Dig a hole somewhere else,
Grandma said. 

Great idea! 
Digging straight down 
seemed most logical. 
I grabbed the 
mildew speckled globe 
from the basement and put 
my fingers on opposite sides. 

Ohio
/
Australia

That's the place 
with kangaroos!
They speak English
there, I think. 

I snatched the green-handled
shovel from grandma’s
dirt-dappled fingers
and started an excavation site
behind the garage.

I worked tirelessly 
beneath the sweltering 
summer day
until the streetlights 
came on. 

I wiped the sweat 
from my forehead 
and was appalled to find
the hole was barely big enough 
to fit both feet inside!

Escape really was out of the question.

The hole slowly vanished
filling with orange clay water,
packed solid with lawnmower shrapnel
and the evening out of earth. 

Now only a slight divot remains
beneath the fire pit Mom installed. 

Hundreds of beer bottle caps 
and thousands of cigarettes have been 
stamped out around the crater,
like little volcanic eruptions 
burying my brief
childish dream
beneath tobacco embers. 

december is thrilled to announce…

Monday, April 15

Meet & Greet and Readings, Co-hosted with december

1-3 pm, Hearth & Soul (9640 Clayton Rd., 63124)

This is a free event. No RSVP needed.

Hearth & Soul will host Trethewey, Cunningham, Smith, Perry, and Hou for a writers salon where the authors will read from their work and sign books. Copies of the featured writers’ recent and well-known works will be available for sale; for pre-orders, email serena@hearthandsoul.com.

Panel: Keeping Language Alive

6 pm, Haertter Hall

$5 for students, $20 for adults

Join us for a conversation about keeping language alive — beyond the shorthand of text, X (formerly Twitter), AI, and email. Moderated by Imani Perry and featuring panelists Natasha Trethewey, Michael Cunningham, Maggie Smith, and current National Student Poet Shangri-La Hou. Ticket sales benefit the National Poetry Series. Click here to purchase individual tickets; for group ticket sales, email nps@jburroughs.org.

*Everyone is welcome and wanted — if ticket prices are prohibitive for you, please contact nps@jburroughs.org to access complimentary tickets.*

Dinner & Auction

7:30-9:30 pm, Private Dining Room

Email nps@jburroughs.org for tickets (only 30 left!)

An intimate dinner with Trethewey, Cunningham, Smith, Perry, regional poets, and Daniel Halpern, founder and director of the National Poetry Series and an executive editor at Knopf, Penguin Random House. Attendees can purchase full tables of nine seats for $5,000 or single seats for $500; a participating author will occupy the 10th seat at every table. Ticket sales benefit NPS.

Guests will have premiere access to a curated auction of exclusive items — see below. The auction is online and bidding is underway. The auction will close at the dinner on April 15. Auction proceeds benefit NPS.

Also featuring . . . Online Auction!

Margaret Atwood, Terrance Hayes, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Padma Lakshmi, Ann Patchett, and Amy Tan have donated rare literary collectibles for auction to support NPS’s commitment to discovering and publishing new poets. All auction proceeds benefit NPS. In addition, NYC-based restaurants Gramercy Tavern (Danny Meyer ’76) and Balthazar have also donated items to support the mission of NPS. Click here to bid today! The auction will close on April 15.

Featured Authors:

Michael Cunningham is a New York Times bestselling author and winner of both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize (The Hours). He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His newest novel, Day, was released in November ’23. 

Imani Perry, Professor in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and in African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is a New York Times bestselling author and the 2022 National Book Award winner for her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.

Maggie Smith is a New York Times bestselling author and poet (Good Bones, Keep Moving, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, etc.). A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and awards from the Ohio Arts Council, the Academy of American Poets.

Natasha Trethewey, 19th Poet Laureate of the United States, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and New York Times bestselling author (Native Guard, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir).

With local student poet Shangri-La Hou, one of five National Student Poets for 2023 – 2024 and a member of the Class of 2024 at John Burroughs School in St. Louis.

The National Poetry Series (NPS) is a leading organization dedicated to advancing the presence, publication, and accessibility of poetry.

Natalie Louise Tombasco is a poet from Staten Island, NY. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at Florida State University and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Southeast Review. Recent work can be found in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. Her debut collection MILK FOR GALL has been selected as the winner of the 2023 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and will be published in Fall 2024 by Southern Indiana Review. Find out more at www.natalielouisetombasco.com

Twitter & Instagram: @gnatalielouise

december: Can you tell us a little bit about the origins of these poems?

Natalie: “Out of the Fluorescent Woods” began as a riff on Dante’s Inferno’s opening lines but instead of being lost in “forest dark,” my speaker leaves behind the buzzing lights of an office hellscape for the domestic sphere and copes with a disenchanted graduate student existence. I’d say this one and “Allow Me to Construct a Time-Step” are companion poems; they sort through workplace bureaucracy, anxieties about climate destruction, and what role reality television serves for so many Americans. I engage with the Real Housewives franchise and consider it as a “guilty pleasure.” Of course, it’s partly interrogation as well since the speaker finds a distorted version of gender and class. It’s like the moment the Bravo jingle starts, I get that little dopamine hit and there’s no pressure to be “academic,” but then again, I do feel like Jane Goodall watching it — thinking what would Judith Butler say about Lisa Vanderpump?

december: What’s next for you?

Natalie: My debut poetry collection will be published in the fall with Southern Indiana Review Press!

Donna Vorreyer spent 36 years as a public school teacher in the Chicago suburbs. She has published three full-length poetry collections and eight chapbooks, and she hosts an online reading series called “A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.” Learn more at: http://www.donnavorreyer.com

Michael Noonan comes from Halifax (home of the Piece Hall), West Yorkshire, and has a background in retail, food production and office work. Has had artworks published in literary journals in the US and UK. His drawing, “The Pedestrian Centre,” and his painting, “Fun Girl,” for which he has been awarded certificates, were shown at the CityScapes and Figurative art exhibitions, run by the Light, Space and Time online art gallery in America; and can be seen on their youtube videos. He admires the great surrealist artists like Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, and Chirico; and his particular favourite is Yves Tanguy. He likes the visionary, dreamlike and subversive qualities of their work, and his own artworks have a tendency towards the offbeat and the unusual. Learn more at: Michael’s Online Gallery or find him on Twitter/X: @readyverbiage